Solo Female Car Living Tour | 2006 Honda Accord Camper | Northwest Nomads Wheel Estate

This is my ride. Big Mama Wanda. My vessel for freedom. This is Rasta Shasta. And this is my box of glue. Don't make it perfect. Don't care about that as much. I think the journey is more important than a perfect rig. Hi, my name is Alana and this is my 2006 Honda Accord car camper that I have been living out of for the past three and a half years. I bought this car originally in 2020 with only 70,000 miles on it with no intention of ever living out of it. I decided I wanted to travel internationally full time. So I actually sold everything, moved out of my apartment four years ago. And I put this car in storage for five months and said, I'll come back to it if I need it. And after five months of traveling internationally and doing work exchanges through WorldPackers, WorkAway, things like that for free accommodation, I decided that maybe that life wasn't for me. And I came back and my car was the only thing that I really had left. So I decided, well, I've seen people do this with a van where they put the things that they need to go camping in a vehicle and go, why can't I do that with a Honda Accord? I already have it. It's already paid off. It functions great as a Honda. So that's what I did. There's not much to the exterior of my car camper. As you can see, we have a solar panel for my anchor power station, and I also have my nightstand collapsible table. And I'm sure you're wondering, what the heck is this tent doing? No, I don't keep this as a rooftop tent all the time. This is a tent that I used during my seasonal job last summer, and it's currently functioning as extra storage, but we can talk more about that later. Another major reason that I decided to keep my Honda Accord instead of going all in on a van is, well, A, a van is expensive and I already had this, but B, gas mileage. I can go like 500 miles on one tank of gas and it doesn't cost more than $50, like ever, depending on which state I go to. So that keeps my costs pretty low in comparison to some of my friends. Now let's head inside. So what I decided to do was take out the passenger seat entirely and build a bed out of like craft foam that you could buy at Joanne's Fabric Store, and big plastic Tupperware containers. So the plastic containers are full of all of my like off-season clothing and items that I don't necessarily need to access all the time. And then I also store extra blankets underneath there as well. Now a lot of people ask me how tall I am because yes, a Honda Accord is a very tiny car. I am only five foot four and it fits me just perfectly. Now next to my bed, I have my power source. This is a 800 watt Anker Solex power station. I don't know what I did without this. It powers all of my phone, my health tracker ring, my cameras, my laptop, my Starlink. It also has these lights that you can use for mood lighting. And I can also power a fan when it's way too hot outside. I usually try to travel with the seasons, so like travel north in the summer and travel south in the winter, but you can't always plan around that, so yes, this is my only solution to that. So before we jump into my closet over on the other side of the car, I wanted to just point out a hack that I really enjoy using. It's using a zippered pillowcase to store things like socks. I have all of my yoga clothing and another one underneath here. And this just makes storing all of these items in one place, but then it's also like a cozy pillow and it's not an annoying container. I guess you could say another one of my temperature control techniques are these bug nets so that I can crack both of my windows and get a cross breeze going in here, especially with the fan. That really helps to cool things down if I'm stuck in a hot place in the summertime. I also have this by my bed for bears. So my Honda Accord doesn't really have a tint job, and I know I could just go get that done, but I decided to make window coverings, both to prevent people from being able to see in my windows at night, but also using this Reflectix material to try and block out some of the sun. So this is many renditions, three years down the line, but this is Reflectix with an old blackout curtain that I got on clearance at Walmart, and then I cut it to fit the shape. And I do the blackout curtain and I overlap it just a little bit to cover all of the cracks and the blackout curtain doesn't sun fade like normal fabric would, pro tip. On top I have a couple hats and my shoes. The only shoes that I own are these three pairs. Then in the drawers on top I have some tank tops because it's currently still summertime, almost fall. Some t-shirts and sun hoodies. I live in sun hoodies when I'm outside because I don't have any sort of shade awning, so this helps me prevent sunburn, same with the hat. And then in the bottom I just have pants, and on the very bottom underneath all of these drawers is my camera bag for work. Okay so I know it looks like a lot, but bear with me, it's pretty organized. We have my ice chest, we have my kitchen, which I have my favorite items are my mini portable blender, and my cast iron skillet. If you don't have a cast iron skillet while you're camping, you're wrong. Also, vinegar and water spray bottles for doing dishes. We have my camp stove that fits in this corner here. This box is full of all of my electrolytes, my coffee, my protein shakes, all the healthy stuff. And then my pantry is all the way in the back, so like canned goods, oil, rice, things to cook with. If you're curious I have a video on my YouTube channel talking all about what's in my pantry, so you can check that out. And then what's in my ice chest, I have a little tip. If you car camp and use an ice chest a lot, and you get sick of all of your items getting wet, every time your ice melts, get two plastic Tupperware containers, this whole build is just plastic Tupperware containers I'm realizing, but you have one that you put all your food in, and then you have a second one that you can fill with your ice. So then when it melts, you just dump this out and refill it, and then all of your produce stays fresh. Yet another pro tip that I like to tell people, instead of using regular paper towels when you're like doing dishes or cleaning up, because it's usually really oily, get the shop towels that are, you know, designed for car oil. They work much better. On this side of my ice chest I have my water collection. I have I think five of these one gallon jugs, and some people wonder why not just get one big jug. I find that that's more of a hassle to go refill, whereas I can just put this in my Planet Fitness bag, walk inside Planet Fitness, refill this at their refill station, and walk back out. So I have a couple that I designate as drinking water, and then I have maybe one or two in the back that are just unfiltered, like not drinkable for dishes. I guess speaking of Planet Fitness, I also kind of sort of live there. That's where I shower and work out and do all of my stretching to stretch out the back pain that comes from living in such a small car. So over the last four years of living on the road, I've found various different ways to make money. Mainly, I created my own YouTube channel five years ago, before I even got on the road as a yoga YouTube channel. And then I posted a random car camping vlog that went stupid viral on every platform. And that kind of turned into my job after three years. But the three years prior to that, I worked as a conversational English tutor online. I've worked seasonally doing trail maintenance in the national forests. I did work exchanges internationally. So yeah, if you just think open-mindedly, there's lots of ways to make it work as long as you are passionate enough to keep going. And now finally, one way that I've learned to kind of culminate all of my passions into one is by hosting outdoor retreats. I call them grounded retreats. And my intention is to help people come outside into nature, do some yoga, relax, take some time out of your busy day for yourself and ground and really pay attention to how it feels to relax and be grounded, because we don't get that a lot living on the road. So I encourage people to bring their car campers, bring their tents, and we all camp outside, do yoga, and it's a great time. So if you're interested, you can learn more about that over on my website, AlanaRobie.com. My name's Alana Robie, and thanks for checking out my 2006 Honda Accord car camper.